Tort Law in America

An Intellectual History

Expanded Edition

G. Edward White

This history of tort law in America looks at how the subject has been conceptualized, pointing out why changes in rules occurred, and who did the changing. White approaches his subject from four perspectives: intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, the phenomenon of professionalization in the late 19th and 20th centuries in America, and the recurrent concerns of tort law since it became a discrete field.

Tort Law in America

An Intellectual History

Expanded Edition

G. Edward White

Description

Widely regarded as a standard in the field, G. Edward White's Tort Law in America is a concise and accessible history of the way legal scholars and judges have conceptualized the subject of torts, the reasons that changes in certain rules and doctrines have occurred, and the people who brought about these changes.

Now in an expanded edition, Tort Law in America features a new preface that places the book within the current scholarship and two new chapters covering developments in American tort law over the past fifteen years. White approaches his subject from four perspectives: intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, the phenomenon of professionalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, and the recurrent
concerns of tort law since its emergence as a discrete field. He puts the intellectual history of this unique branch of law into the general picture of philosophy, sociology, and literature in what is not only a major work of legal scholarship but also a tour de force for anyone interested in American intellectual history.

Tort Law in America

An Intellectual History

Expanded Edition

G. Edward White

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Intellectual Origins of Torts in America2. The Impact of Legal Science on Tort Law, 1880-19103. The Impact of Realism on Tort Law, 1910-19454. The Twentieth-Century Judge as Torts Theorist: Cardozo5. William Prosser, Consensus Thought, and the Nature of Tort Law, 1945-19706. The Twentieth-Century Judge as Torts Theorist: Traynor7. The 1970s: Neoconceptualism and the Future of Tort Law8. The Unexpected Persistence of Negligence, 1980-20009. Entering the Twenty-First CenturyNotes Index

Tort Law in America

An Intellectual History

Expanded Edition

G. Edward White

Author Information

G. Edward White is Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School and author of The American Judicial Tradition.